Thursday, December 22, 2016

Released Free Android App for our YouTube Channel "QualityPointTech".


As specified in many of my previous posts, our YouTube Channel "QualityPointTech" is growing steadily and therefore I am shifting my focus from web development business to our YouTube Channel.
Though our channel is having variety of videos, like Motivational Quotes, GK, IQ Tests, Google Doodles and SQL Tutorial , my main focus is on giving latest Science and Technology News through our Youtube channel.
Daily I am spending lot of time and effort to find latest Science and Technology News from various sources including Press Releases from many Universities, such as MIT, Stanford, Harvard and UC. And, I used to check various Science and Technology related groups in various social media websites. Apart from these sources, I used to explore various crowd-fuding sites like Kickstarter and indegogo, to find innovative products.
And, I am cross-checking various other sources to make sure that I am giving genuine and latest news items.  In short, I am taking many steps to make our youtube Channel as the best place to get latest Science and Technology News.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wQualityPointTechYouTubeChannel_4157263

I had already uploaded lot of Science/Technology Videos covering various topics, like Robots, Drones, 3D printing, Nano Technology, CRISPR Gene Editing, Material Science, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning and Gadgets.
So, I believe People who are interested in knowing latest Science and Technology News will like our YouTube Channel.  And, I wanted to make our Channel Videos easily available to them. And, therefore I have released an Android App for our youtube Channel.  Apart from showing our own YouTube Channel Videos, this Android App will be showing Popular and Latest Technology News Videos that are collected from the entire youtube site  using YouTube's auto-generated playlists.

You can freely install this App from Google Play Store  or Amazon App Store.
If you like our App, remember to give your Reviews & Ratings in the App page. And, if you find any difficulty in using our App, you can inform me by sending email to rajamanickam.a@gmail.com

And,  I expect your suggestions to improve our channel further.
If you are expert in any technology and willing to share your knowledge with our channel viewers, I welcome you to contact me through the email.

And, refer our YouTube Channel and Android App to your friends who may be interested in watching latest Science and Technology news and other useful videos.


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Friday, November 18, 2016

About the Revolutionary Gene-Editing Technology e.g CRISPR / CAS9


 In this post I would like to write about the Gene Editing Tools, especially about CRISPR / CAS 9.

 Gene-Editing is not new, it is available for many years. But recent developments such as invention of CRISPR  are making huge differences  by simplifying the Gene-editing process. Previously Gene-Editing was a very complex and tedious process that needs to be done by experts. But CRISPR which is known as "Molecular Scissors" made this task comparatively simple.

These days, we used to hear about  lot of surprising news about CRISPR gene-editing. For example, designer babies, stopping the ageing, Cancer cure, curing blindness, etc.
Some of them may be true, and some of them are not true. We will come to know about which of them are true in near future.

Anyway, there is no question about the huge impact of CRISPR or any other Gene-editing tool to the humanity in coming days.

The advent of CRISPR/Cas9 has revolutionized the Genome Editing Industry. This technique is allowing a previously unattainable level of genomic targeting with greater efficiency and simplicity. Due to this ability, the share of CRISPR/Cas9 is continuously increasing in the Genome Editing Industry.

According to the  "Global CRISPR/Cas9 Market Outlook 2022" report provided by  Research and Markets, it is anticipated that the global CRISPR/Cas9 market will cross US $1.5 Billion by 2022.

The growth of the market is likely to be driven by expanding drug discovery applications and increasing research related activities for exploring CRISPR/Cas9 therapeutic applications.

The major application areas of CRISPR/Cas9 include cell line engineering, genetic engineering, CRISPR plasmid development, human stem cells, gene library development and producing GM organisms or crops. Cell Line Engineering is the largest area of application of CRISPR/Cas9, followed by Genetic Engineering. The genetic engineering market employing CRISPR/Cas9 is expected to witness the highest growth in 2016-2022. This growth is likely to be driven by reduction of evolutionary time in comparison to previous gene editing tools, such as Zinc Finger Nucleases (ZFNs) and Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases (TALENs).



Already scientists have taken a key step toward a cure for sickle cell disease, using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to fix the mutated gene responsible for the disease in stem cells from the blood of affected patients.

On 28 October, a team in China delivered the modified cells into a patient with aggressive lung cancer as part of a clinical trial at the West China Hospital.

MIT researchers have now added an extra layer of control over when and where this gene editing occurs, by making the system responsive to light.

With that system, gene editing takes place only when researchers shine ultraviolet light on the target cells. This kind of control could help scientists study in greater detail the timing of cellular and genetic events that influence embryonic development or disease progression. Eventually, it could also offer a more targeted way to turn off cancer-causing genes in tumor cells.

Using the CRISPR Gene Editing system, the MIT biological engineers have devised a way to record complex histories in the DNA of human cells, allowing them to retrieve “memories” of past events, such as inflammation, by sequencing the DNA.

This analog memory storage system — the first that can record the duration and/or intensity of events in human cells — could also help scientists study how cells differentiate into various tissues during embryonic development, how cells experience environmental conditions,  and how they undergo genetic changes that lead to disease.

And, Salk Institute scientists were able to partially restore visual responses in blind rodents. This will open new avenues for basic research and a variety of treatments, such as for retinal, heart and neurological diseases.

Lot of people are investing heavily in CRISPR related companies. Anyway, still patent war is going on between various research groups.  So,  it is not  clear about the role of CRISPR in the healthcare industry.
Do you know any interesting or useful details about CRISPR or any other Gene-editing Tool? You can share the details through the comments.

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Thursday, August 4, 2016

QualityPointTech shop at SpreadShirt. Get T-Shirts and other Merchandise with various Designs and Quotes



As specified in my previous posts, I am focusing more on developing our YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/qualitypointtech
I am spending lot of time and effort for regularly adding useful & interesting Videos and latest technology news videos.

Our channel is getting many new subscribers daily, and view count is getting increased steadily. Right now I am earning money by showing Google Adsense ads in the youtube channel as I explained in this video.

But earnings from Google adsense is low comparing with the affiliate earnings reported by many other similar youtube channel owners.
Few years back, I thought about participating in affiliate marketing to earn additional money from our websites and youtube traffic. I explored few affiliate programs.  But that time I didn't choose to focus on affiliate programs, as I thought it will take lot of efforts to earn any significant money.
But now I decided to opt the affiliate program as youtube it self encouraging that activity.
After exploring various affiliate programs I decided to choose Spreadshirt which is officially supported by Google/Youtube.

I created a shop at https://shop.spreadshirt.com/QualityPointTech/ and regularly adding many T-Shirts and other products with Quotes and other designs.

https://shop.spreadshirt.com/QualityPointTech/


It seems spreadshirt will pay 20% as affiliate commission and apart from affiliate commission it will pay volume commission for selling more products in specified time. And, it allows us to set our own price for our designs.
So, I hope it will be useful for earning some additional money apart from earning from Google Adsense. While I am exploring options to earn from Spreadshirt shop, at the same time I am very keen on keeping the shop really useful for the customers. I take every possible step to keep the price minimum. For example, I am using designs from free open art designs instead of using the marketplace designs which will increase the price further.


And, spreadshirt is offering some discounts at certain time periods. For example, while writing this post it is offering 15% off for any order.

You can check the offer details at header banner at https://shop.spreadshirt.com/QualityPointTech/

Share your suggestions to improve our shop further.


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Friday, July 1, 2016

Released QualityPointTech Timesheet version 3.2 with option to Unlock/UnFreeze submitted timesheet.



We have released new version (version 3.2) of our Timesheet Software.
We have updated the script to allow the the admins to unlock/unfreeze the already submitted timesheets. It will help the employees to make corrections if they have submitted their timesheet with any mistakes.



This feature was requested by many of our customers. So, we have decided to include this feature into the core script, though I always prefer to keep our timesheet simple.

You can see the demo here, and you can buy it from here.




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Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Google's Modular Phone System "Project Ara" will be the Future of Smartphones.


Around 3 years back, Motorola had announced about its plans for releasing modular smart phones codenamed as "Project Ara". Motorola was part of Google when making this announcement.

After seeing this announcement I uploaded a youtube video to give news about it, and I was surprised to know about the huge expectation for the modular phones from various people.


I came to know that the modular phone concept video released by phonebloks got millions of views. And, I have gone through lot of discussions and comments about modular phones, particularly about Project Ara.

All the discussions are really interesting  and I got more interest with the project ara and I was eagerly following up the news about project Ara.

I came to know that the modular phone system can give lot of benefits to the users.  Modular phone systems like "Project ara" can help to improve the environmental conditions by reducing the electronic wastes. Because people will be using their mobile phones for long period of time as there is no need for replacing the entire phone when some part of the phone was malfunctioning, or you need to have any new feature to your phone.

In the 2014 Google I/O, Google's ATAP Team showed a demo of Project ara prototype. The Ara phone didn't boot properly during this demo. Anyway this demo gave lot of hope about the project ara. After viewing this demo lot of people showed interest in discussing about modular phones.


This interest was increased further once after Google successfully showed the spiral 2 prototype demo and the updates at Google I/O 2015.

And, another interesting thing about Project Ara is, we can create our own smartphone by choosing the modules according to our own specifications using Google's Ara configurator App.

Google says the device is designed to be utilized by "6 billion people"; including 1 billion current smartphone users, 5 billion feature phone users, and 1 billion future users not currently connected.
Ara Smartphones are built using modules inserted into metal endoskeletal frames known as "endos". The frame will be the only component in an Ara Smartphone made by Google. It acts as the switch to the on-device network linking all the modules together

Modules can provide common smartphone features, such as cameras and speakers, but can also provide more specialized features, such as medical devices, receipt printers, laser pointers, pico projectors, night vision sensors, or game controller buttons. Project Ara is open hardware platform. Google has partnered with Rockchip for getting cheap SoCs for project ara phones.
Google is working with Linaro to provide special edition of Android which will recognize when modules are added or removed on the fly.

Recently Google gave more updates about Project Ara at Google I/O 2016.




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Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Google Space for reading and sharing Science and Technology News



Yesterday Google had released a new Social App named Spaces for doing Group-sharing easily from Android , iOS and Web.

I thought this new feature will be very useful for sharing Science and Technology news and for doing discussion about the latest innovations.

So, I have created a space for sharing Science and Technology News at https://spaces.google.com/space/340619791

You can read Latest Tech News there and you can share you comments about it by joining into this Space. I hope it will be very useful for having useful discussion about latest innovations.  If you like this Space, invite your friends to join this space.

If you are not familiar with Spaces, watch the below video to know about Google's Spaces.



I am spending lot of time and effort to find latest technology news from various sources. So, I hope joining this space can help you to save lot of time in finding latest technology News.

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Saturday, April 2, 2016

Activated CloudFlare's Rocket Loader for few of our Websites


Few years back I had published a post about activating the Content Delivery Network (CDN) "CloudFlare" for one of our Websites.

Recently I came to know that CloudFlare is providing a new option for improving the quick loading of the website. This new feature is named as Rocket Loader.


CloudFlare explains Rocket Loader as,

Rocket Loader is a general-purpose asynchronous JavaScript loader coupled with a lightweight virtual browser which can safely run any JavaScript code after window.onload.

Turning on Rocket Loader will immediately improve a web page's window.onload time (assuming there is JavaScript on the page), which can have a positive impact on your Google search ranking.

So, I thought of trying this Rocket Loader feature in  our websites. And, I activated this option for our news website RtoZ.org and our Motivational Quotes Website TheQuotes.Net

 This Rocket Loader feature is still in beta, so if you find any issue in loading/viewing our sites, let me know.

Right now, I am not seeing any issue in RtoZ,org. But I had noticed two issues in TheQuotes.net.

One is, because of this Rocket Loader, our Facebook Cover application was not working properly in TheQuotes.Net website.
So, I added data-cfasync=false in specific part of the script to exclude it from Rocket Loader.


And  the Second issue is, this page loading performance was degraded. According to pingdom that page was loaded within a second before activating Rocket Loader, but it took more than a second after activating Rocket Loader.
After viewing the page source I could understand that Rocket Loader was adding its own js files even if the page is not having any javascript files. So, obviously Rocket Loader is reducing the performance of this page which is not having any javascript. So, I decided to exclude this page also. But it seems we can not do it by adding  data-cfasync=false. So, I excluded it from Rocket Loader by adding a Page Rule from the CloudFlare account login. Now it is loading faster.




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Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Responsive design for TheQuotes.net to make it Mobile-Friendly



Few years back, I had published post about using wptouch plugin for making our motivational Quotes website TheQuotes.net

Wptouch made the website mobile friendly. But it had many shortcomings. For example, the free version of this plugin is not having option to show adsense advertisements. I had to manually include the adsense code in the wptouch plugin theme. And, I had to do it again each and every time whenever updating the wptouch with new version.

And, the cooperation between wptouch and wpsupercache is not good. Sometimes, we used to see the mobile version of the cached pages in desktop.
Another important problem with wptouch is, it seems hackers are exploiting it to include malwares. So, I decided to replace the wptouch with responsive design.
I just deactivated/deleted wptouch plugin and replaced the main theme with responsive theme. This simple step made the sites to appear correctly in desktop, tablets and mobile devices without creating any additional issues.

But in case of TheQuotes.Net, I had added lot of custom codings in the main wordpress theme. So, just changing the theme is not feasible. It will require lot of rework. So, I decided to manually change the current theme into responsive theme by adding required code/style changes.

First I added viewport meta tag, and I added few media queries to do the specific style changes related to mobile devices and tablet devices. And, I replaced the old Google Adsense ads with Responsive adunits provided by Google Adsense.

After making these changes, I tested it using Tools provided by Google and Bing to make sure that our site passes the mobile-friendly test.

Are you able to conveniently use our website Thequotes.net in your mobile/tablet devices? If you face any difficulty or error you can inform me or you can participate in this Forum Discussion.



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Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Moving from Windows XP to Linux (Ubuntu / Lubuntu). Read this post if you are still running Windows XP in Old Computer



Few days back, Google Chrome browser in my computer started showing warning message "This computer will soon stop receiving Google Chrome Updates because Windows XP and Windows Vista will no longer be supported".

According to Google blog post, starting April 2016, Chrome will continue to function on these platforms but will no longer receive updates and security fixes.

After seeing this warning message in the Google Chrome, finally I made a decision to move from Windows XP.

 I already thought about moving from Windows XP many times, particularly when Microsoft stopped supporting windows XP on April 8, 2014. That time I did lot of analysis about moving from XP.  But I decided to postpone the move as it required lot of time and effort. Because there is no easy way to upgrade from windows XP to recent windows version. We had to completely destroy Windows XP and we need to freshly install the new versions of windows like Windows 7 or Windows 8. i-e We have to install all the applications again.

That time I was engaged in lot of different projects that required various tools and setups. I didn't want to lose them by removing windows xp. And, I had many clients who frequently ask corrections/updations  in their old projects. So, keeping the same setup/environment will help to save lot of time.

Because of these constraints I decided to postpone the OS upgrading plan.
But, now the situation got changed entirely. I changed our business model. As our youtube channel is growing very fast, I decided to focus more on developing/promoting  our YouTube Channel, our Forum and  our other websites (e.g TheQuotes.Net, RtoZ.org ) to earn money from Google Adsense, than doing web development projects for other clients.


So, I stopped taking any new projects from the clients so that I need not work on making corrections/modifications in future.

I implemented this transition plan gradually past 2 years.  And, Now reached a point where I can freely destroy Windows XP without worrying about losing environment/setup/tools/data for client projects.  And, all our internal projects (e.g Timesheet) are php/mysql based apps, and we keep them in our hosting server. So we need not care about them also.
So, finally I decided to move from Windows XP.  And, few days back, I noticed different behaviour of our websites. After doing more investigation, I found that our websites got hacked. It took lot of time and energy to bring them back to normal. The hackers might have used various approaches to get into our hosting server. But whenever we report this kind of issues, usually the hosting support team will just blame our side. They used to say that the hackers might have stolen the passwords from local computer.  I was regularly running anti-virus softwares in my windows XP computer, and it was free from any virus. Anyway, Windows XP is vulnerable for hacking  as Microsoft stopped updating security patches long back.

So, I wanted to move from Windows XP immediately. Once after making this decision of moving from XP, obviously the next question arises, i-e Which operating system should I choose to replace the windows XP?

I explored two options. One is Windows 8 and another is Linux.  Since both Windows XP and Windows 8 are from the same software provider Microsoft, I thought choosing Windows 8 will make the Operating System upgrading task easy, and also I thought it will be easy to have all the already existing tools/software again.  But after doing more analysis I decided to go with Linux. Find below the list of reasons why I preferred Linux over Windows 8.

1. After running windows 8 compatibility check, I came to know that hardware of my computer is NOT suitable for running Windows 8. That means I need to buy a new computer itself. I didn't want to do that as my current computer was working without any problems many years.

2. Price of Windows 8 is costly comparing to Linux which is completely Free. And, any additional applications also need to be purchased whereas we can get them freely in Linux.

3. Generally I preferred Open Source over the Microsoft.  Because as a Developer I realized the difference between Internet Explorer Vs. Mozilla FireFox and Dot Net Vs. php

4. Our hosting servers are Linux servers. Scripts developed in Local Windows Development Environment will not always work on Linux servers. I faced this situation many times. We had to make small changes in  local coding to make it work in Linux server. So, if I make the local development environment using Linux similar to the hosting server, it will be useful to avoid this kind of issues.


Once after deciding to go with Linux, I started thinking about which Linux distribution I need to choose. i-e Whether I need to choose  Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, openSUSE, etc.  After doing some Google search and analysis, I decided to install Ubuntu Operating System.

Before start installing ubuntu, I had taken back up of data from my windows XP computer. I put the files in another hard drive and then taken backup of browser data (e.g  bookmarks and saved passwords ) by using browser Sync feature. Both Firefox and chrome are providing this Feature. We need to just click the Sync button after logging into the browser account.  We can access them from anywhere from any device if we login with that same account.

After completing data backup task, I started downloading Ubuntu from http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

The latest ubuntu version is Ubuntu 15.10. But I decided to download the previous stable version Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS as recommended by the Ubuntu website.

Ubuntu download is available in two flavours.  One is 64 bit version which is generally recommended by Ubuntu website, and another is 32 bit version for machines with less than 2GB RAM. Since my machine is old, I selected the 32 bit option even though my machine is having 2GB. For downloading ubuntu we need not create any accounts/logins, we can easily download just by clicking the download button. And, the download didn't take much time. I didn't remember the exact time, but I can say that the download completed within a Hour even with our slow internet connection.

 After downloading the Ubuntu, I searched for ways to make it USB bootable and I came to know about the Universal USB Installer (UUI) provided by pendrivelinux.com . We have to just download the UUI from here and  follow few steps as mentioned there to create the bootable USB from the Ubuntu iso file . This step can be completed in few minutes. Now the pendrive will have the Ubuntu installer.

After completing this step, I restarted the computer and pressed "F2" button ( in some computers, it will be "Del" key) to get into the BIOS setup.  I changed the boot order/priority so that the machine can boot from USB instead of the hard disk.

I saved  the  BIOS setup changes and exit from there,  and  the computer got rebooted.  Then I was seeing the Ubuntu installation menu which provided many options including the option to try ubuntu without installing it.  This option will be useful if you want to know whether ubuntu will be suitable for your computer.
Anyway, I decided to go with actual installation which  again gave me few options including an option keep the current Windows XP OS also in addition to Ubuntu ( i-e Dual booting). I proceeded with full/fresh ubuntu installation (i-e overwriting existing windows XP OS).
Ubuntu installation process is very simple and very easy, we need not do anything other than just choosing our language and timezone. Everything will be taken care by the installer. I was surprised to see this. Because in case of windows XP installation we need to do few additional steps. For example, installing Network drivers, Audio and display drivers.

The Ubuntu installation got completed very quickly. Once after completing installation, I could start using the computer casually without requiring any additional efforts. I could use Internet, play audio and video without requiring any manual steps and without facing any issues.

But I noticed one issue, i-e the system was very slow some times. I did Google search about it and came to know that the default Desktop Environment (DE) "Unity" is not suitable for low configuration old machines. And, I came to know about many light weight Desktop Environments, such as LXDE, LXQT, Xfce, and MATE. And, I decided to replace the Unity desktop with LXDE which is very light weight comparing to others.

For doing that I opened the Terminal Screen by pressing Alt+Ctl+T key combinations. The Terminal is something similar to command line in windows XP.  For removing Unity Desktop I tried one of below two commands.
sudo apt-get remove unity
sudo apt-get remove ubuntu-desktop
 
I didn't remember which one I exactly used for removing unity.

And, for installing LXDE I run the below command from the Terminal

sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop

I came to know that "Sudo" is for running the command as super user.

After rebooting the computer, the LXDE desktop started appearing. Now it is showing Lubuntu instead of ubuntu.  It is looking like the windows XP with start menu also.  So any windows XP user will become familiar with lubuntu instantly.

After replacing Unity with LXDE, the computer started working very fast (comparatively). I could see the difference clearly. There is no change in any hardware. But lot of performance improvement just by replacing the windows XP with Ubuntu. Particularity I noticed the huge change when viewing photos. They got loaded quickly.
 Then I started looking for frequently used items, like browsers. I noticed a browser in the ubuntu menu. It is fast and light weight. Anyway, I want to have my favorite Firefox and chrome browsers. I opened the "ubuntu software center" and searched for Firefox and installed it from there. This process is very simple and easy.  After opening Firefox, I logged in with my firefox browser account to sync the browser data. I got all the data including stored password.

I tried to do the same thing  for getting Google chrome browser. But I couldn't find it in the "Ubuntu Software Center". So, I decided to download it from Google chrome website. But it not having option for downloading 32-bit version. It has only 64 bit version. Anyway, I proceeded with that one, but I couldn't install it as expected.

Then I came to know that Chromium is exactly same as Google Chrome. So, I installed it from "ubuntu software center".  It is working exactly same as the Google Chrome Browser. Surprisingly I could use the Google Chrome account also for logging into the Chromium. i-e In Chromium, I could use all the bookmarks and saved passwords that I saved from Google Chrome in Windows XP.


In windows XP, normally I use Windows Movie Maker for creating youtube Videos. I was looking for Movie maker equivalent in Linux. I found various tools like, Lightworks, Kdenlive, OpenShot, Cinelerra, PiTiVi, and Avidemux.

I decided to use OpenShot as its specifications looked similar to Windows Movie Maker. I installed OpenShot from "Ubuntu software center" and I could learn/use it easily in very short time period. But I noticed some parts of the output video is distorted  and sometimes openshot got closed abruptly without giving any warning. This kind of crashes made me to think about alternates. And, I noticed there is a difference in the version installed in my machine and the latest version specified in the Openshot website.  I thought of giving a try to the latest version. I followed the steps specified in the openshot website to get the latest version. Instead of updating the existing openshot it installed separately as openshot-qt. But this one also got crashed more frequently. So, I decided to try other video editing software.
Then I installed kdenlive from "Ubuntu software center". I didn't face crash problem with kdenlive.
And,  I didn't find any built-in audio recorder in kdenlive. So, I installed Audacity from the "Ubuntu software center". It is really useful software. And, in windows XP Operating System, I use screen capture software Camstudio for recording desktop screen as well as audio from speaker or mic. That one was very useful for creating youtube videos. After doing some search, I came to  know that RecordMyDesktop will do the same thing in ubuntu.  So, I installed it from Ubuntu Software Center. Basically it worked fine. But I am bit uncomfortable with it as its short cuts keys are different from camstudio. And, some of the Global short cut keys are not working for me. So, I had to use the mouse for recording and stopping the record. I hope it will become familiar once after I use it for few days.
Also, I came to know that there is no option to easily switch between recording from mic and recording from computer/speaker, it seems we have to choose the appropriate option in audio control panel for doing this. I felt that the default audio controller Alsamixer is bit uncomfortable for making this switch. And, audio volume is bit low. I couldn't increase the volume beyond 100% from Alsamixer. So, i uninstalled Alsamixer and installed pavucontrol (PulseAudio Volume Control). It is working fine and it is user-friendly, I could easily change recording source from mic or speaker easily, and we can increase the volume beyond 100% easily.

Though the kdenlive supported the RecordMyDesktop's file format .ogv, it didn't show the video preview properly for this file format, while video preview is working smoothly for other Video formats like .mp4. As suggested in various forums, I tried various settings changes in kdenlive to solve this issue. But this issue was not solved. As a workaround, I used the below command for converting the .ogv file into mp4 file before importing into Kdenlive.

avconv -i input.ogv -strict experimental output.mp4

When I checked the IP address of the machine I noticed that it is changing daily.  I have to use  "ifconfig" for checking the ip address in linux, whereas I use "ipconfig" in windows. (notice the one letter change)
I made the IP static by changing from DHCP option to manual ip address.

As of now everything is going smoothly. I found that libreoffice is almost similar to microsoft office. (from my usage perspective), and I didn't face any difficulty in using leafpad or gedit which are almost similar to notepad. I could easily play videos and music easily. Till now I didn't see any problem.

The only thing that made me to face difficulty is, using reliance data card /USB modem. Drivers were not installed automatically on inserting the data card in USB. I need to do some workarounds as specified in some forums. Now it is working.

I setup the php/mysql development environment easily by installing LAMP by running below commands.

sudo apt-get install apache2 //install Apache
sudo apt-get install mysql-server // install mysql
sudo apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5 //install php
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart //restart server

The server was working properly. But I couldn't add my own pages in html folder due to permission issues. So, I had to change the virtual host config file. I changed the Documentroot and added new directory to give permission to my web development directory. After making these changes I could add my own files.
And, I installed phpmyadmin for managing mysql database tables by running below command.
sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin apache2-utils

Then I looked for light weight IDE for doing php web development. I came to know about Geany, and I installed it, and I feel very comfortable in using it. It provides syntax highlighting and code suggestion/completion.

For transferring files between our local computer and hosting server, I installed the FTP Tool FileZilla from "Ubuntu software Center".

And, I have noticed that my logitech web camera started working without installing any drivers manually. I just clicked  the Cheese from the menu to see the web camera output. I just had to change the resolution to make it work. It is much more better than the quality I used to get in windows XP even with the logitech's own drivers.
 


I like performance and stability of Ubuntu over windows xp. I used to notice slowness in switching tabs if I open multiple tabs in Firefox from windows XP. But now I am not facing such issues.

So, if you are running windows xp in old computers  you may think about changing into Linux when seeing below message in your chrome browser next time.

"This computer will soon stop receiving Google Chrome Updates because Windows XP and Windows Vista will no longer be supported"
If your computer is old (i-e has very low end configuration) , you can go with linux as you will not be having any other option. Because you can not keep it with windows XP for long time due to security issues and lack of any upgraded apps. And, you can not upgrade to new windows versions due to their minimum system requirements. So, you will be having the only one option of moving into linux if you want to use your old computer.

But if your windows xp computer is bit new with good configuration you can do more analysis about going to Linux or any other OS based on your own needs.

I feel very comfortable in using Linux. It doesn't mean that it will work for everyone. Say for example, if you are using .net applications, they won't work in Linux directly. ( I heard that we can use windows applications in linux by using Wine. But I haven't tried it, and I don't know about its limitations ) And, if you are completely new to linux you may find some difficulty in handling it.  Though I am using Linux as Desktop PC, I am bit familiar with it for long time as our hosting servers are Linux servers, and used to access them through ssh using putty. I am familiar with using basic linux commands, like, ls, ps, grep, cat, more , find, cd, rm, etc. And, I used suse linux few years back for doing one of our projects that required linux application. That may be the reason why I am feeling comfortable with Linux.  So, if you completely new to linux, may be you can try the dual booting. i-e keeping windows xp while installing ubuntu.  But I am not sure whether it will work reliably.




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Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Updates about Our Discussion Forum.


Past few days, I was spending lot of time in updating our websites to make them more secure and mobile-friendly.
As part of this updation, I had updated our Discussion Forum also.  Our Forum is running  from phpbb3 software. First I updated  it to its latest version, and then I made some changes to remove many of our old applications that were using the forum login. Since those applications are now either outdated or not actively used by the people, I removed them. For example, I removed SERP checker, Inbound Link analysis, PR checker, Affiliate program, twitter multipost, stock news reader, etc. and therefore I updated the Forum to break the integration with these outdated apps. Right now the Forum login supports Quiz and Quotes Tweet only.
Since Search Feature of the Forum was taking more database space, I thought of replacing the phpbb search feature with Google Custom Search. And therefore I disabled search and added Google Custom search. But after disabling the search, I had noticed that  few other useful features (eg. links for View unread posts, View new posts, View your posts)  were also removed. So, I enabled the search feature again. Anyway, I  changed the search indexing from "Fulltext native" to "Fulltext mysql" to save database resource.

So, now we have both built-in search and Google custom search. Let me know if you find any difficulty in searching our Forum.

Since I am spending significant time in creating youtube videos, I decided to inform about our latest youtube videos to our Forum members.  I explored various options to do that. Finally I decided to use the Feedburner image for showing titles of 5 latest Videos. You can see this image at top of the Forum.

Share your suggestions to improve our Forum further by adding your comments here




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Saturday, March 5, 2016

Know about Youtube Shortcut Keys




Google's Video sharing site youtube.com is growing rapidly. Lot of people are sharing their knowledge and experience through their youtube videos.
Youtube is sharing ad revenue with video creators. So, people are getting encouraged for spending lot of time and energy to share their knowledge through their youtube channel. And therefore we could find lot of useful and interesting videos in the youtube website. Ultimately we will be spending lot of time in watching youtube videos. So, it will be good to know about shortcut keys for using youtube player effectively just by using keyboard alone.

Many people are familiar with using "space bar" for pausing/playing video in many different video platforms. They will be trying to do the samething with youtube also. But it won't work always. It will work only when the focus is on the youtube player control part. So, we should use "K" for pausing/playing youtube video. Few days back I had created a youtube video for telling about the useful youtube shortcut keys.
Watch the below video to know about it.



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